


Back Into the Gloom Once More

by methylviolet10b



Series: October Spooktacular Prompt Fics 2020 [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Daydreaming, Light Angst, M/M, Memories, Prompt Fic, Writer's Block, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26851039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: Watson pauses in the middle of writing. Written for the first prompt of October Spooktacular 2020 over on Watson's Woes.
Series: October Spooktacular Prompt Fics 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958713
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Back Into the Gloom Once More

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: A quote from The Sign of Four, which can be found in the italicized text below.  
> Warnings: Short, not much plot, and not particularly cheerful. And written in a huge rush. You have been warned.

_"The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light,--sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more."_

I paused, carefully setting my pen aside so as to avoid creating a blotch on the paper. The scene, and the memories behind it, were suddenly too real on this rainy, dismal evening, even from the cozy comfort of my desk and chair in our sitting room in Baker Street.

“You were unhappy then.”

I startled and only barely avoided knocking over my inkwell. Lost in my own thoughts, I had not heard Holmes approach. His eyes rose from the words I had just written to my face.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I was…struggling, I suppose.” Haunted was perhaps a better word, but one I knew better than to use to Holmes, even when I meant it in the metaphorical sense. But I had been haunted then by my lost career, my dismal prospects, my lingering ill-health. It was all too easy to feel like a ghost, invisible, powerless, unable to be seen or heard.

As always, Holmes seemed to read my thought even as it formed. “You never were one of those random faces. I always saw you. You did not know it at the time, and that is my fault, almost certainly; I should have observed your incorrect conclusion and corrected it. But I too was blind.” His grey eyes, often so cold and remote, were warm as he smiled with unguarded affection. “I wanted you so badly, I failed to see that you wanted, too.”

I sighed, and the daydream evaporated. I glanced at the real Holmes, ensconced in his armchair, chin sunk nearly to chest, pipe-smoke swirling around his head in clouds as he pondered his latest problem. I might as well have been in India as the sitting-room for all intents and purposes.

I picked up my pen again, and then set it down in the stand and capped the inkwell. I was no longer in the mood to write. I might as well go to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted October 5, 2020.


End file.
